August 03, 2018

The roofing contractor was driving through Chingford in North East London when he was pulled over by Waltham Forest Council workers. Stewart Gosling, 43, kept the stash of empty crisp packets and water bottles in a plastic commercial waste bag in the back of his white van. But when he was pulled over by council workers carrying out spot checks, they told him he was breaking the law for carrying the rubbish without permission.

Upon inspection, the Council "workers" also discovered sandwich wrappers in the bag, so this was clearly an offense as he has no license to carry his own rubbish in a bag in his own van - and so they fined him £300.

Well, you can see how this would be a problem in England. In the future, he should just toss stuff out the window as he drives.

June 07, 2018

Department of Homeland Security has just announced that it intends to compile a comprehensive list of hundreds of thousands of “journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.”, and collect any “information that could be relevant” about them.

This is to say that DHS may not have a clue as to what could be relevant, so just to be on the safe side, they'll note everything they find about you. The motivation for constructing the monstrosity known as DHS was portrayed as necessary for fighting terrorism in a post-9/11 world, but these programs have nothing to do with terrorism; you are now the enemy.

Makes you want to run right out and order an Alexa, doesn't it? There's a reason why DHS built that huge server farm in Utah a couple of years ago.

May 30, 2018

Firearms aren’t common in the U.K., so they are experiencing an epidemic of “knife crime.” Also acid attacks. Now proposals for knife control are being floated:

A judge wants the points of kitchen knives to be rounded and blunted to reduce the number of young men dying from stab wounds in street attacks. “Kitchens contain lethal knives which are potential murder weapons and only butchers and fishmongers need eight or 10 inch kitchen knives with points,” the judge said.

Crown Court Judge Nic Madge said in a speech that there should be a nationwide program to file down the points of large kitchen knives and to ban their sale. Every kitchen contains lethal knives which are potential murder weapons. "It might even be that the police could organise a programme whereby the owners of kitchen knives, which have been properly and lawfully bought for culinary purposes, could be taken somewhere to be modified, with the points being ground down into rounded ends," he said.

Next up, of course, would be scissors. You don't need them. It might be best, in fact, to eliminate kitchens altogether.

March 06, 2018

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Marion County has joined other Oregon communities in scaling back its curbside recycling program.

Starting Monday, residents should throw shredded paper, egg cartons and most plastic containers in the trash instead of the blue bins.

Sorry, folks, that whole recycling thing was overrated - about what you'd expect from the Democratics who mandated it in the first place. How about just dumping your trash in the big blue bins? It's all going to the landfill anyway.

And the City of Portland mandates that trash can't be picked up weekly, but yard debris and recycling stuff must be picked up weekly. Because Saving The Planet, or something.

February 25, 2018

The latest one from the control freaks: ban plastic straws. Because Environment. Everybody knows that they only get used once and are then thrown away, so they should be banned...except that I've re-used them for years; they're easy enough to clean, pipe-cleaners and soap and water work really well. They also stand up well in things like milk-shakes. But the control freaks know best. They always do; it's a hallmark of liberalism. It's a big reason why Portland City Council banned plastic bags - a few years after mandating them because using them would save trees, and harvesting trees is Very Bad.

Then they decided that plastic bags were Very Bad - because Big Oil. Never mind that the bags aren't produced from oil at all, but rather from a by-product of natural gas drilling that had previously simply been burned; "flared off", in the industry vernacular. They're produced from waste, in other words. But now stores in Portland are prohibited from offering them, which is a great reason to shop in Beaverton or Tigard. In Portland today, you either have to purchase cloth bags, or hope your paper bags don't disintegrate in the rain. But the politicians sure feel good about themselves and their commitment to the environment.

A bill introduced in the California Assembly prohibiting restaurants from providing plastic straws to customers who don’t ask for them is intended to raise awareness about the harmful effects of plastic on the environment, not put waiters and bartenders in jail, its author says - although the bill introduced by Democratic Ian Calderon, as written, would do just that:

AB-1884 inserts new language into the Retail Food section of the California Health and Safety Code, violations of which are misdemeanors “punishable by a fine of not less than $25 or more than $1,000, or by imprisonment in the county jail for a term not exceeding 6 months, or by both.”

Calderon's been Twittering and press-releasing away, claiming that such punishments won't happen. He's also making other wild claims:

An estimated 500 million straws are used in the United States every day. This number is enough to fill over 127 school buses each day and is calculated to be about 1.6 straws per person in the U.S. In a summary of all trash collected as part of California’s Coastal Cleanup Day between 1989 and 2014, straws and stirrers rank as the 6th most common item collected.

The statistic is often attributed to the U.S. National Park Service (which did reference it in a 2013 environmental call for action), but the 500 million figure ultimately rests on the word of 16-year-old Milo Cress, who launched a campaign in 2011 (at the age of nine) called Be Straw Free.

Could be right; could be wrong, nobody's ever fact-checked the kid's claim. Or Calderon's claims, for that matter. But Calderon wants to essentially ban plastic straws in California. Next up: banning plastic knives and forks, most likely.

As is so often the case, these things metastasize into other places, which is occurring in parts of Portland, Oregon: Widmer Brothers Brewing, purveyors of fine craft-produced mule pee, have announced that they will ban plastic straws at their bar. Although why anybody would drink mule-pee with a straw remains unclear.

But Widmer's a Portland operation; I'd never visit there, and don't buy their products elsewhere.

December 14, 2017

Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR), an investor network that advises on factory farming, says it is “increasingly probable” that countries will start taxing meat in order to fight climate change.

FAIRR believes that will occur within the next decade. Frankly, the "climate change fighters" would be a lot more believable if they cut back on jetting around the globe to attend conferences, but video-conferences would dramatically reduce the overall potential for ego-stroking.

Researchers say the issue must be addressed if countries are going to stick to the Paris Climate Agreement, the second anniversary of which is being celebrated Tuesday at a summit in Paris.

Oh, good! They're going to have themselves another "summit"! They just had a "conference" in New Orleans, depositing 60,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as they jetted in and then out.

They nod sagely at one another while intoning their views on the climate "crisis" and the need for all of us to reduce our "carbon footprint" - even as they're responsible for far greater emissions than average schmucks like you. As for their meat tax, it's of interest to consider how such a thing might be implemented.

It would likely involve a massive program of indoctrination education, in which schmucks are informed of the health benefits of not eating meat (and of course, this would have to include dairy products as well, because carbon), followed by imposing a meat tax at grocery checkout (followed in due course by a concomitant tax on dairy products down the road). The vegan smug is almost palpable. Surprisingly, as they reduce gas emissions to "fight climate change", they don't seem to be going after cabbage or brussels sprouts.

November 16, 2017

If you have a home in the Portland city limits, you might want to consider putting it on the market now. That's because the city council passed another regulation that takes effect January 1: any home placed on the market on January 1 or thereafter must undergo an "energy audit", and copies of the results must be submitted to the city and to each prospective purchaser. Needless to say, that will impose hundreds of dollars in additional expenses upon the seller, but it's all good, because it's part of the Democrat politicians' effort to save the planet - at your expense, of course.

You get to pay a few hundred for the audit, and you get to pay for all of the copies that must be distributed. You thought you owned the property? You fool.

November 07, 2017

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed executive orders on Monday to impose sweeping green energy mandates on new construction and help triple the number of electric vehicles in the state by 2020.

The governor signed the orders at a ceremony in Portland, before she travels to Germany later this week to attend the United Nations climate talks.

"Green for thee, but not for me".

Affordable housing? That's not an issue:

Under the governor's first executive order, new homes built after September 2020 must be equipped for solar panel installation and commercial buildings must meet the same mandate by October 2022. By October 2022, all parking structures for new homes and commercial buildings must be wired for at least one electric vehicle charger.

The governor's second executive order sets a goal of at least 50,000 registered electric vehicles in the state by 2020, a huge increase over just three years from the 16,000 currently registered.

State government will help Oregon meet that goal, through mandates in the governor's executive order to increase state purchases of electric vehicles and install more charging stations on government property.

For Democratics, money is no object; they'll just demand more taxes and fees to pay for their "Green&Sustainable" dreams. So what if the cost of construction of housing will be increased by unbelievable amounts? Every new home in the state must be wired to accept solar panels and have electric car charging stations. Because Kate says so. It's how Democratics roll.

Then she'll jet halfway around the globe to yak with folks about the importance of reducing our "carbon footprint". Then she'll jet back, unfortunately.

Wish she'd stay in Germany, or at least go back to Minnesota, rather than back here.